Why Nvidia Earnings Matter for Tesla Stock: AI Compute and FSD Training

Coming into Thursday trading, Tesla stock was down 23% this year and down 1% over the past 12 months. (Andrey Rudakov/Bloomberg)

Key Points

• Tesla stock rose early Thursday, supported by Nvidia’s strong quarterly results and updates regarding Tesla’s robo-taxi fleet.
• Tesla’s robo-taxi account on X stated that its unsupervised fleet is larger and operating seven days a week from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m.

Tesla stock rose early Thursday, helped by a couple of things: Robo-taxis and Nvidia .

Shares of the electric-vehicle maker were up 0.6% at $347.28, while S&P 500 rose 0.4% and Dow Jones Industrial Average futures fell 0.1%.

Nasdaq Composite futures were stronger, up 1%, thanks to Nvidia’s strong quarterly results. Nvidia stock rose nearly 7% in premarket trading after better-than-expected earnings and strong guidance.

Wednesday evening, Nvidia reported second-quarter earnings per share of $2.22, better than the $2.09 Wall Street expected. What’s more, Nvidia expects third-quarter sales of about $108 billion, up from $57 billion a year ago. Guidance was better than Wall Street’s $104 billion projection. Nvidia also gave a look into fiscal year 2028, which is the next fiscal year ending in January 2028. Sales could grow by 70%. Wall Street was looking for closer to 45% growth.

Results were a relief. Coming into earnings, Nvidia stock had dropped in eight of the past nine trading sessions. Nvidia’s chips have enabled the AI computing boom, and its results impact a host of companies, including Tesla, which is using AI to train self-driving cars and humanoid robots.

Tesla also had a small robo-taxi tidbit for investors. On Wednesday, Tesla’s robo-taxi account on X said its fleet was operating from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m., seven days a week. The unsupervised fleet is also “a lot bigger.”

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More cars without safety monitors is a positive for investors. The hours look to be a standardization of operating metrics across all cities. Tesla didn’t respond to a request for comment about the tweet.

Tesla launched a self-driving robo-taxi service in Austin, Texas, in June 2025, with safety monitors riding in the passenger seat of Model Y vehicles. Service expansion has been slow, which is one reason shares have been stuck. Tesla stock was about $350 the day after the launch. It entered Thursday trading at about $346.

The path taken to $346 has been wild, though. Tesla stock has traded as high as $498.83 and as low as $288.77.

Write to Al Root at allen.root@barrons.com.

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